Tuesday afternoon, residents of the road were surprised the high water was lingering, though generally only outdoors.

DIANA Karron returned briefly to check on damage at her home but was preparing for her and two children to spend another night with her mother in Esopus because of the threat that the next high tide would bring more flooding.

"I left Monday -- early, before lunch," she said. "I knew it was going to flood because high tide was hours away and it was all the way up my boat ramp. ... So I knew it was coming in, but I didn't know it was going to be three-and-a-half feet inside."

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She also said this flooding was different from what happened during Tropical Storm Irene in August 2011. In that storm, Saugerties was affected by muddy water coming down the Esopus Creek. This time, the culprit was water being pushed into the creek from the nearby Hudson River.

"The only difference is that it's not mud," Karron said. "It's water just the same, but it's not that horrible mucky, fishy smelling stuff. Still, my floor is buckled."

NEXT DOOR to Karron, a man and his son who declined to give their names were examining the damage in a house they were renting from property owner Tony Montano. When asked how high the water had risen during Sandy, they pointed to the roof of the garage.

Montano was upset because there isn't likely to be a good real estate market for properties that have been flooded twice in just over a year.

"We might have gotten 18 inches (of flooding in Tropical Storm Irene), and you can live with that," he said. "When it gets up to four and five feet, it's pretty devastating. But you're in New York, so you can't sell anything (and) you are trapped in the situation you're in."

LIGHTHOUSE Drive resident Joan Zuckerman, who lives in a house that has been expanded from a cabin built in 1956, has pictures of the Hudson River, Esopus Creek and waterfront-related landmarks on her walls.

"This was the first time I'd ever had water in the house," she said. "Last year, for Irene, we only had it in the garage, and while it came within a half an inch of coming in the house, we did not have any in the house."

Zuckerman's back yard still was a lake on Tuesday, with a rainbow-colored sheen of petroleum on top of the water and debris washing up onto a porch.

Items strewn along the nearby street included trash and recycling containers, children's toys, sections of fences and small sheds.

"I spent a good part of the morning picking things up," said Zuckerman's daughter, Faith, who came up from lower Manhattan before the storm.

Faith said preparations for the storm included putting sandbags and tarps on parts of the house that were expected to have water seep in. But she and her family decided to leave on Monday, and go to the shelter at the local senior center, when the water started to rise quickly, she said.

"We left when it came up to our garage," she said. "It came up frighteningly fast. If you looked at it when it was at the end of the driveway, you could see it advancing.

Joan Zuckerman was concerned about having lost land-line phone service.

"For some reason, I don't have Verizon," she said. "I don't understand why I have no telephone. I called, and they told me November 15."